AHA BLS certification is a credential issued by the American Heart Association that proves you can perform basic life support, including CPR, on adults, children, and infants. It’s the standard certification required by most hospitals, clinics, dental offices, and other healthcare settings as a condition of employment. The card you receive after completing the course is valid for two years.
Who Needs BLS Certification
BLS stands for Basic Life Support, and the AHA’s course is designed primarily for healthcare professionals and anyone in a medical role. That includes nurses, doctors, paramedics, EMTs, dental hygienists, medical assistants, physical therapists, and pharmacy staff. It’s also commonly required for nursing students, medical students, and other health science programs before clinical rotations begin.
While non-healthcare workers can certainly take the course, the BLS Provider course is specifically built around team-based resuscitation scenarios you’d encounter in a clinical environment. If you’re a lifeguard, teacher, or someone who simply wants to know CPR for personal readiness, the AHA offers separate Heartsaver courses that cover similar ground without the healthcare-specific team dynamics. But if a job posting or school program says “AHA BLS,” this is the course they mean.
What the Course Covers
The core of BLS training is high-quality CPR. You’ll learn to deliver chest compressions at a rate of 100 to 120 per minute, pressing at least 2 inches deep on an adult and at least one-third the depth of the chest on children and infants. You’ll practice allowing the chest to fully recoil between compressions, minimizing pauses, and coordinating with a second rescuer to switch roles without interrupting compressions.
Beyond CPR, the course teaches you to use an automated external defibrillator (AED), deliver rescue breaths with a bag-mask device and a pocket mask, and relieve choking in adults, children, and infants. You’ll also work through multi-rescuer scenarios that mirror what actually happens when a patient goes into cardiac arrest in a hospital or clinic, including how to communicate within a team and when to activate emergency response systems.
Training Formats and Time Commitment
The AHA offers two paths to the same certification. Both result in the identical BLS Provider completion card.
The classroom (instructor-led) course puts you with an AHA instructor for the entire session. The instructor teaches the cognitive material, then guides you through hands-on skills practice and testing. The full provider course takes roughly 4.5 hours including breaks. If you’re renewing, the classroom renewal course runs about 4 hours.
The blended learning option, called HeartCode BLS, splits the course into two parts. You complete the knowledge portion online at your own pace, which takes 1 to 2 hours. Then you attend a separate in-person skills session with an AHA instructor, lasting anywhere from 60 minutes to 2 hours depending on how quickly you demonstrate competence. Many people prefer this format because it’s easier to fit into a busy schedule, and you can review the online material as many times as you need before showing up for the hands-on portion.
Exam and Passing Requirements
Earning the certification requires passing two components: a skills test and a written exam. During the skills test, an instructor watches you perform CPR and other techniques on a manikin and evaluates whether you’re hitting the correct rate, depth, and technique. The written exam is a multiple-choice test with a minimum passing score of 84%. If you’re in the instructor-led course, you take this exam online after completing the in-person session. You need to pass both the skills test and the written exam to receive your completion card.
Cost Breakdown
What you pay depends on the format and where you take the course. The AHA sells the HeartCode BLS online portion for $37. The provider manual eBook costs $16.80, and the digital completion card (eCard) is $3.50. Those are just the AHA’s direct fees. Most people take the course through a local training center, which sets its own pricing for the instructor-led experience. Training centers typically bundle the manual, instruction, and eCard into a single fee ranging from roughly $60 to $90, though prices vary by location. Some employers and schools cover the cost or offer on-site training at no charge.
How Long Certification Lasts
Your BLS Provider card is valid for two years, calculated through the end of the month in which it was issued. So if you complete the course on March 10, 2025, your card expires at the end of March 2027. Most employers expect you to renew before it lapses, and many will flag upcoming expirations 60 to 90 days in advance.
When it’s time to renew, you can take the shorter renewal course (about 4 hours in the classroom format) instead of the full provider course, as long as your card hasn’t expired. If it has already expired, you’ll need to retake the full course. Some people prefer the blended learning renewal path to minimize time away from work.
AHA vs. Other BLS Providers
The American Red Cross and other organizations also offer BLS courses, and the content is broadly similar. The distinction matters because many healthcare employers specifically require the AHA version. Hospitals, in particular, tend to accept only AHA BLS cards. This isn’t a quality judgment so much as a standardization choice: the AHA writes the resuscitation guidelines that most U.S. hospitals follow, and employers want staff trained under those same protocols. Before signing up for any BLS course, check with your employer or school to confirm which provider they accept. If the requirement says “AHA BLS” or “American Heart Association BLS,” a Red Cross card won’t satisfy it.